The present invention relates to a method for subjecting a subject to be measured to treatment such as observation/analysis/processing using a focused ion beam device, etc., based on position information for the subject to be measured constituted by foreign matter on the surface of a sample or defects such as shape abnormalities measured by a foreign matter/defect inspection devices, for example.
2. Background Art
In semiconductor fabrication methods, such as that for semiconductor integrated circuits, in order to improve production yield as the fabrication process is refined and the degree of integration is improved, it becomes a very important problem to prevent foreign matter from being introduced during the fabrication process.
For this purpose, in a fabrication process, a controlling wafer referred to as a control wafer/monitor wafer is introduced into a product wafer and the controlling wafer and the product wafer are then inspected using a foreign matter/defect inspection device immediately after each process or process that is important with respect to control. Defects such as the presence of foreign matter or shape abnormalities found by this inspection process are examined and analyzed so as to specify the cause of the introduction/occurrence. In addition, appropriate measures are taken against any causes to improve reliability of the fabrication process.
Inspection using a foreign matter/defect inspection device is conducted without changing the shape of a sample used for fabrication, because it is also important to learn on which section of the sample a defect is detected.
A dedicated analyzer/measuring device is used for examining and analyzing defects such as the presence of foreign matter or shape abnormalities. A variety of analyzers/measuring devices including a scanning electron microscope and a focused ion beam device with an EDS (Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy) analysis function are used depending on the application.
The position of defects such as foreign matter on the surface of a sample or of shape abnormalities on a semiconductor wafer is measured by a foreign matter/defect inspection device. The confirmed foreign matter or defects such as shape abnormalities are examined and analyzed in detail by a measuring device according to the purpose. For this purpose, it is necessary to mount a sample for which positions are measured using the foreign matter/defect inspection device onto a measuring device, and to move the foreign matter or defects such as shape abnormalities, of which position is measured, to positions where observation and analysis by the measuring device is possible. Along with improvement of semiconductor fabrication technologies, since foreign matter or defects to be measured are becoming smaller and smaller and samples such as semiconductor wafers are becoming larger, it is very difficult to specify the position of foreign matter/defects using a foreign matter/defect inspection device. The shape of a sample or a certain shape on the surface of the sample is made to be a mark, positional coordinates of the mark are confirmed using both a foreign matter/defect inspection device and a measuring device, and coordinate linkage for matching positional coordinates of the sample is performed between a plurality of devices. At this time, the same size of samples can be observed and inspected by a sample stage of both the foreign matter/defect inspection device and the measuring device.
However, since a sample stage of a the foreign matter/defect inspection device or of a measuring device becomes larger as the sample size increase, the entire device becomes larger, causing the footprint of the device to increase. In addition, the device will also become more expensive as it increases in size.
In a particular, when a second device is a focused ion beam device, destructive testing is performed on a surface of a sample using teaching processing, for example. The sample used in testing therefore cannot be returned to the fabrication process. Since the sample is not returned to the fabrication process after such an inspection, the shape of the sample required for a fabrication process does not have to be maintained, and more and more, there is a noticeable need to fully study the necessity of a measuring device for handling large scale samples in terms of cost effectiveness.